There's a Secret Behind IKEA's Catalog Photos

When you open a fashion brand's catalog or shop for a new dress online, you probably assume that the models wearing the clothes don't look like that in real life. Photoshop is everywhere in fashion (and sometimes it's rather egregious), but did you know that the images you see in furniture catalogs might also not be what they seem?

At first hearing this, we couldn't believe all those cozy, well-designed rooms didn't really exist. But IKEA says that producing their catalog digitally is more efficient and eco-friendly, as they don't have to build sets and transport furniture that would ultimately be discarded.

"The most expensive and complicated things we have to create and shoot are kitchens," Martin Enthed, an IKEA IT manager, told CG Society. "From both an environmental and time point of view, we don't want to have to ship in all those white-goods from everywhere, shoot them and then ship them all back again. And unfortunately, kitchens are one of those rooms that differ very much depending on where you are in the world. A kitchen in the US will look very different to a kitchen in Japan, for example, or in Germany. So you need lots of different layouts in order to localise the kitchen area in brochures."

But wary consumers need not get up in arms. Enthed also stresses that he knows it's important for shoppers to know exactly what they're getting when they buy furniture, so his team takes painstaking steps to mimic the real-life product as best they can.

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